FREE ESSAY ON THE CONFLICT OF SELF

THE CONFLICT OF SELF

The best way to sum up Nel and Sula lies in a quote from the novel Sula. Morrison tells
the reader that two very different black girls grew up in the Bottom. The first speaks of
Nel, described by the narrator as one whose parents "had succeeded in rubbing [her] down
to a dull glow any sparkle or sputter she had" (24). A townswoman describes "when Sula
drank beer she never belched" (136). Obviously these two characters are extremely
diverse. Sula felt no regret, and Nel was a nobody. Through different settings,
conflicts, and diction both Sula and Nel's conflicts of finding and accepting their
selves arises and makes them who they are (McClain 366). 
In keeping with the idea that Sula and Nel are compliments to one another, it is fitting
that the meaning of their names symbolically compliment each other. Nel, knell, connotes
the long dreary sound that a bell makes announcing the death, or tragedy of someone. On
the other hand Sula, Solyman, means The Magnificent (Mickelson 315). The meanings of
their names are not a coincidence. Morrison wrote the novel Sula in the core of the
revived feminist movement (Smith 324). Therefore Morrison's name choice had a great deal
to do with her views on femininity. The author greatly admires the way that Sula embraces
life and does not look back. Where as she looks down upon Nel's follow-the-leader living
style. Morrison seems to be motivating the audience to consider a more non-conformist
view of life (Mickelson 316)
In the literary world the end of most women that rebel end in death. This destiny does
not spare Sula. Even on her death bed she holds her position of rejecting the Christian
definition of goodness. She believes that only life matters; it alone must serve her
whims, and that immortality becomes too high a price to pay for duty and suffering
(Mickelson 316). Sula leaves the bottom and embraces the world. She only returns when her
appetite for the world if satisfied. Nel on the other hand confirms to the Christian idea
that perseverance and commitment will in the end have a greater outcome than earthly joy.
Nel does just exactly what everyone expects of her. She marries, has kids, and spends her
life caring for others and not thinking of herself. 
An individual's job must be to embrace their whole person-the good, the bad, the fears,
the regrets, and even hope and loss. If an individual can not blend two conflicting
components of identity together, he then cannot become one. The individual cannot react
in certain situations and thus must mimic someone on how to feel. A weak self can
surrender totally to the will and power of a stronger self, or the weak self can part of
the stronger self, almost as a possession. In a crisis Nel's calm and quiescent nature
surfaces (Schapiro 307). But all of Sula's being explodes into a mighty and even
ferocious action (Mickelson 315). Morrison describes the two being so close that "they
themselves had difficulty distinguishing one's thoughts from the other's" (75). Each of
the girls must seek their own self through seeking the other. In this blurring of selves
they instead of becoming more distinguished in their own being, "they work[ed] until the
two holes were one and the same" (58). 
Morrison used Sula and Nel as representations of rebellion and conformity rather than as
individual characters with their own minds and motivation. Anne Mickelson writes that
Sula:
Exceeds boundaries, creates excitement, tries to break free of encroachments of external
cultural forces and challenges destiny.... Believing that an unpatterned, unconditioned
life is possible, Sula tries to avoid uniformity by creating her own kind of life (315)
But the author does not just leave the reader to think that Sula made the decision to
rebel with out having due cause. 
She steps in with an armload of explanations distributed over several pages. Sula had
inherited her grandmother's arrogance and her mother's self-indulgence; she had never
felt any obligation to please someone unless their pleasure pleased her; she was as
willing to receive pain as to give it; she had never been the same since she overheard
her mother explain that she loved Sula but did not like her; the boy's [Chicken Little]
drowning had closed something off in her... (316)
Literary criticizer does not mention Nel. Maybe she feels that her conformed so much that
it explaining it isn't necessary and especially not as interesting as Sula's defiance.
So at the end of the novel who wins? Each one of them never truly found what they sought
for individually. But what they had all along was one another. Together Sula and Nel were
a whole person. But Sula probably never knew it. Nel did not see it until it was too
late. Sula's life exemplifies that of a defiant gesture which in her mind liberates her
to an extent, and keeps her from pitying herself. Her pride steers from the fact that she
walks through life with no blinders on. Yet no happy ending comes for Sula. She dies in
loneliness, not in freedom (Mickelson 316). The town does not even do anything about her
death for three days. But Nel is left with a "fine cry-loud and long-but it had no bottom
and it had no to, just circles and circles of sorrow" (Morrison 174). So in the end each
of them prove that the do need love, and each other. They are part of one another.